25-10 - Flipbook - Page 48
Hephzibah
Ministries
The Rapture
The Rapture is an eschatological concept held by some Christians, particularly
those of American evangelicalism, consisting of an end-time event when all
dead Christian believers will be resurrected and, joined with Christians who are
still alive, together will rise "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." This view of
eschatology is typically part of dispensational premillennialism, a form
of futurism that considers various prophecies in the Bible as remaining unfulfilled
and occurring in the future.
The idea of a rapture as it is defined in dispensational premillennialism is not
found in historic Christianity and is a relatively recent doctrine originating from
the 1830s. The term is used frequently among fundamentalist theologians in
the United States. The origin of the term extends from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians in the Bible, which uses the Greek word harpazo (Ancient
Greek: ἁÄÃάζω), meaning "to snatch away" or "to seize".
Differing viewpoints exist about the exact time of the rapture and whether Christ's return would occur in one event or two. Pretribulationism distinguishes
the rapture from the Second Coming of Jesus Christ mentioned in the Gospel of
Matthew, 2 Thessalonians, and Revelation. This view holds that the rapture
would precede the seven-year Tribulation, which would culminate in Christ's
second coming and be followed by a thousand-year Messianic Kingdom. This
theory grew out of the translations of the Bible that John Nelson Darby analyzed
in 1833. Pretribulationism is the most widely held view among Christians believing in the rapture today, although this view is disputed within evangelicalism. Other views include midtribulation, prewrath, and posttribulation rapture.
